9 ms·

Samsung claims 5G mobile data transmission breakthrough

31 points by dialsquare1886 13y ago

commiebob 13y ago
In other news, 5G users can now burn through their data cap in under 10 seconds!
- FooBarWidget 13y ago
  Not to mention, drain their battery at 10 times the speed.
  - timmm 13y ago
    They said that about 4G and about higher screen resolutions, and about higher display dimensions. They will innovate.
    - criley 13y ago
      Will they? My 3100mAh Galaxy Note II has 4G, and the battery life is noticeably worse than my old 1200mAh iPhone 3G. Battery tech has long been one of the biggest limiting factors in mobile tech, and I'm not quite sure that advances in energy density are moving as quickly as everything else. Which means I think that batteries are slowly lasting less long as energy usage of new features consistently outstrips improvements in the tech. Remember when phones used to last a week or a month? Now we're lucky to get a day, day and a half.
    - FooBarWidget 13y ago
      The "innovation" so far consists of making phones thicker so that they can house a bigger battery.
- Retric 13y ago
  Data cap's are indirectly related to transmission speeds so you may always be able to burn though the data cap in under 10 seconds, but competition will still slowly raise the cap as technology improves. IMO, the current 2+GB caps are not that bad, raise that to 20GB and you can watch a fair amount of hulu for example (~50+hours) without a problem.
  - dagw 13y ago
    competition will still slowly raise the cap as technology improves. Has not been my experience at all here in Sweden. Data caps have been lowered across the board over the past year as data speeds and availability has improved.
    - freehunter 13y ago
      That's been my experience in the US as well. On EDGE/EVDO or even early days of 3G, unlimited plans were extremely common and fairly cheap. When 3G became more established and 4G/LTE started rolling out, 2GB is now the normal with massive increases in prices as you add more ($10/GB is common).
    - msh 13y ago
      Strange, in Denmark they have been raised. You can get up to 1 TB mobile 4g lte plans for 70 usd (including 25% vat - http://www.3.dk/Privat/Mobilt-bredband/Abonnement/MB-FRI/ http://www.3.dk/Privat/Mobilt-bredband/Abonnement/MB-FRI/).
- OGinparadise 13y ago
  Brilliantly put. I see some tech bloggers go through "specs" of speed, only to forget the data cap. If money is not an issue, then maybe, but most people usage over the cap will truly bite.
  - timmm 13y ago
    Sprint has no data cap...
    - dlhavema 13y ago
      but don't you only get arund 500 Mb/month of "high speed data" and then your back down to 2G/EDGE/etc?
      - timmm 13y ago
        I know AT&T does that I haven't experienced that with Sprint.
whyrusleeping 13y ago
Correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't 4G supposed to be 1Gbit/s?
- NegativeK 13y ago
  1Gbit/s stationary, 100Mbit/s when moving.
  - dhughes 13y ago
    That's good to know I just assumed transmission speeds always meant while moving since it is a phone, I never even thought it meant when stationary.
    - kalleboo 13y ago
      With HSDPA and 4G a lot of people are using it to replace their home internet (not so much in the US, but elsewhere it's a big thing). Hence the current capacity crunch mentioned in the article
  - DougWebb 13y ago
    For Sprint, in most areas, 4G means 50Mbit/s when stationary within range of a WiFi access point, and 50 kbit/s otherwise.
Havoc 13y ago
We might as well drop the whole ?G classification. Since the US carriers started branding stuff 4G that wasn't anywhere close to spec its been a free for all. Marketing aside, the tech might have merit in its own right though. I think the Ka band isn't available for use in my country though...
- 300bps 13y ago
  Even people who should "know better" were fooled by AT&T claims of being 4G on the iPhone 4s: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-57408432-266/is-the-at-t-iphone-4s-a-4g-phone-or-not/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-57408432-266/is-the-at-t-i...
  - Havoc 13y ago
    Not to judge the Americans too harshly, but it seems to invariably be American companies who spin this bullsht. In other countries the carriers at least have the decency to call it LTE (with 4G sometimes mentioned in brackets). As for the article linked - I wouldn't even call that "fooled by". That implies that there was a plausible case & the journalist was deceived via some active plot. If the reporter had done even vague research as to what 4G is (the topic of his article [lol]) then he/she would have smelled a rat. That to me is a straight up failure as a journalist, rather than "fooled by".
    - 300bps 13y ago
      Your point is correct but I was actually speaking more broadly. Specifically, there is a friend of mine who has 3 CCIE certifications and actually works at Cisco. He knows more about wired and wireless networks than anyone I know. But his wife's iPhone 4s with AT&T showed a "4G" signal when it was connected so he just assumed it was legitimate 4G.
- sp332 13y ago
  4G actually means something, it's just not enforceable. The trouble is, the trademark was not acquired in time before it became a "generic term" which means anyone can call anything 4G.
soperj 13y ago
But I thought Samsung didn't innovate?
- mwfunk 13y ago
  Well, if you read the article, it's not actually a Samsung thing. This is university research that was partially funded by a grant from Samsung among others.
  - soperj 13y ago
    I did read the article. The University research partially funded by Samsung is completely seperate from this announcement. Thanks though.
mmahemoff 13y ago
Reminds me of the 5-blade razor story, from parody to reality. http://boingboing.net/2005/09/14/gillettes-5blade-raz.html http://boingboing.net/2005/09/14/gillettes-5blade-raz.html
kalleboo 13y ago
> "In my opinion 4G achieves a decent speed and what we need to do is crack the capacity crunch we are facing." Translation: "The theoretical numbers we sold LTE with are a good target, maybe this technology lets us deliver that in the real world to all the users who want it." From what I can tell, this technology isn't about making spectrum more efficient, but opening up new parts of the spectrum (10+GHz) that weren't usable before. edit: nice map of radio spectrum. Being able to use 28GHz seems like a massive leap. http://www.telecomcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Spectrum-Map.png http://www.telecomcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Spec... The short-term solution is to open up more spectrum to mobile use, but things are looking pretty congested. http://siliconangle.com/files/2011/03/spectrum_map1.jpg http://siliconangle.com/files/2011/03/spectrum_map1.jpg
sp332 13y ago
I thought 28 GHz signals would be stopped by relatively small obstacles (thin walls). It's not a matter of detection; the signal is absorbed and there is none left to detect on the other side. How could they overcome this with an antenna array? Edit: According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka_band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka_band this band is used for satellite communications, but it very susceptible to attenuation in rain. So it's very cool that a new antenna tech could improve on satellite downlinks, but it still doesn't seem practical for a cell phone.
- r00fus 13y ago
  So great theoretical speeds, but will likely fail consistenly in real-world use. I'm going to wait until field trials in actual units are underway before becoming excited about this one.
- hexedpackets 13y ago
  Absorption is directly correlated with frequency, yes. Their 2km mile is probably a lab condition free-space number which will never even come close to being reached in the real world, especially in urban areas. This could be useful to a telecom if they implement an expensive design that uses obstructions to their advantage. Essentially blast the radio waves down streets as if they are isolated tunnels. That would reduce interference to almost nothing, but require many more access points than they currently have. They would also still have the problem of penetration indoors.
jlarsson 13y ago
Ericsson did an LTE-Advanced demo reaching around 950Mbps from a moving van almost 2 years ago ...
gcb0 13y ago
I honestly have a hard time wanting more than 3G at any time. if anything, i'd like better latency and coverage.
- msh 13y ago
  my LTE connection got much better latency than 3g on the same carrier (maybe around 15-25 ms less)
pieter 13y ago
All these faster speeds won't do anything really for heavily populated areas. The most important thing is total available bandwidth (bytes/sec/hz), and it's unclear how better that will get. LTE itself doesn't improve a lot over 3G techniques, the thing that's making LTE faster in saturated conditions right now is that there's just more bandwidth compared to 3G.

commiebob 13y ago

In other news, 5G users can now burn through their data cap in under 10 seconds!

FooBarWidget 13y ago
Not to mention, drain their battery at 10 times the speed.
- timmm 13y ago
  They said that about 4G and about higher screen resolutions, and about higher display dimensions. They will innovate.
  - criley 13y ago
    Will they? My 3100mAh Galaxy Note II has 4G, and the battery life is noticeably worse than my old 1200mAh iPhone 3G. Battery tech has long been one of the biggest limiting factors in mobile tech, and I'm not quite sure that advances in energy density are moving as quickly as everything else. Which means I think that batteries are slowly lasting less long as energy usage of new features consistently outstrips improvements in the tech. Remember when phones used to last a week or a month? Now we're lucky to get a day, day and a half.
  - FooBarWidget 13y ago
    The "innovation" so far consists of making phones thicker so that they can house a bigger battery.
Retric 13y ago
Data cap's are indirectly related to transmission speeds so you may always be able to burn though the data cap in under 10 seconds, but competition will still slowly raise the cap as technology improves. IMO, the current 2+GB caps are not that bad, raise that to 20GB and you can watch a fair amount of hulu for example (~50+hours) without a problem.
- dagw 13y ago
  competition will still slowly raise the cap as technology improves. Has not been my experience at all here in Sweden. Data caps have been lowered across the board over the past year as data speeds and availability has improved.
  - freehunter 13y ago
    That's been my experience in the US as well. On EDGE/EVDO or even early days of 3G, unlimited plans were extremely common and fairly cheap. When 3G became more established and 4G/LTE started rolling out, 2GB is now the normal with massive increases in prices as you add more ($10/GB is common).
  - msh 13y ago
    Strange, in Denmark they have been raised. You can get up to 1 TB mobile 4g lte plans for 70 usd (including 25% vat - http://www.3.dk/Privat/Mobilt-bredband/Abonnement/MB-FRI/ http://www.3.dk/Privat/Mobilt-bredband/Abonnement/MB-FRI/).
OGinparadise 13y ago
Brilliantly put. I see some tech bloggers go through "specs" of speed, only to forget the data cap. If money is not an issue, then maybe, but most people usage over the cap will truly bite.
- timmm 13y ago
  Sprint has no data cap...
  - dlhavema 13y ago
    but don't you only get arund 500 Mb/month of "high speed data" and then your back down to 2G/EDGE/etc?
    - timmm 13y ago
      I know AT&T does that I haven't experienced that with Sprint.

whyrusleeping 13y ago

Correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't 4G supposed to be 1Gbit/s?

NegativeK 13y ago
1Gbit/s stationary, 100Mbit/s when moving.
- dhughes 13y ago
  That's good to know I just assumed transmission speeds always meant while moving since it is a phone, I never even thought it meant when stationary.
  - kalleboo 13y ago
    With HSDPA and 4G a lot of people are using it to replace their home internet (not so much in the US, but elsewhere it's a big thing). Hence the current capacity crunch mentioned in the article
- DougWebb 13y ago
  For Sprint, in most areas, 4G means 50Mbit/s when stationary within range of a WiFi access point, and 50 kbit/s otherwise.

Havoc 13y ago

We might as well drop the whole ?G classification. Since the US carriers started branding stuff 4G that wasn't anywhere close to spec its been a free for all. Marketing aside, the tech might have merit in its own right though. I think the Ka band isn't available for use in my country though...

300bps 13y ago
Even people who should "know better" were fooled by AT&T claims of being 4G on the iPhone 4s: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-57408432-266/is-the-at-t-iphone-4s-a-4g-phone-or-not/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-57408432-266/is-the-at-t-i...
- Havoc 13y ago
  Not to judge the Americans too harshly, but it seems to invariably be American companies who spin this bullsht. In other countries the carriers at least have the decency to call it LTE (with 4G sometimes mentioned in brackets). As for the article linked - I wouldn't even call that "fooled by". That implies that there was a plausible case & the journalist was deceived via some active plot. If the reporter had done even vague research as to what 4G is (the topic of his article [lol]) then he/she would have smelled a rat. That to me is a straight up failure as a journalist, rather than "fooled by".
  - 300bps 13y ago
    Your point is correct but I was actually speaking more broadly. Specifically, there is a friend of mine who has 3 CCIE certifications and actually works at Cisco. He knows more about wired and wireless networks than anyone I know. But his wife's iPhone 4s with AT&T showed a "4G" signal when it was connected so he just assumed it was legitimate 4G.
sp332 13y ago
4G actually means something, it's just not enforceable. The trouble is, the trademark was not acquired in time before it became a "generic term" which means anyone can call anything 4G.

soperj 13y ago

But I thought Samsung didn't innovate?

mwfunk 13y ago
Well, if you read the article, it's not actually a Samsung thing. This is university research that was partially funded by a grant from Samsung among others.
- soperj 13y ago
  I did read the article. The University research partially funded by Samsung is completely seperate from this announcement. Thanks though.

mmahemoff 13y ago

Reminds me of the 5-blade razor story, from parody to reality. http://boingboing.net/2005/09/14/gillettes-5blade-raz.html http://boingboing.net/2005/09/14/gillettes-5blade-raz.html

kalleboo 13y ago

> "In my opinion 4G achieves a decent speed and what we need to do is crack the capacity crunch we are facing." Translation: "The theoretical numbers we sold LTE with are a good target, maybe this technology lets us deliver that in the real world to all the users who want it." From what I can tell, this technology isn't about making spectrum more efficient, but opening up new parts of the spectrum (10+GHz) that weren't usable before. edit: nice map of radio spectrum. Being able to use 28GHz seems like a massive leap. http://www.telecomcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Spectrum-Map.png http://www.telecomcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Spec... The short-term solution is to open up more spectrum to mobile use, but things are looking pretty congested. http://siliconangle.com/files/2011/03/spectrum_map1.jpg http://siliconangle.com/files/2011/03/spectrum_map1.jpg

sp332 13y ago

I thought 28 GHz signals would be stopped by relatively small obstacles (thin walls). It's not a matter of detection; the signal is absorbed and there is none left to detect on the other side. How could they overcome this with an antenna array? Edit: According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka_band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka_band this band is used for satellite communications, but it very susceptible to attenuation in rain. So it's very cool that a new antenna tech could improve on satellite downlinks, but it still doesn't seem practical for a cell phone.

r00fus 13y ago
So great theoretical speeds, but will likely fail consistenly in real-world use. I'm going to wait until field trials in actual units are underway before becoming excited about this one.
hexedpackets 13y ago
Absorption is directly correlated with frequency, yes. Their 2km mile is probably a lab condition free-space number which will never even come close to being reached in the real world, especially in urban areas. This could be useful to a telecom if they implement an expensive design that uses obstructions to their advantage. Essentially blast the radio waves down streets as if they are isolated tunnels. That would reduce interference to almost nothing, but require many more access points than they currently have. They would also still have the problem of penetration indoors.

jlarsson 13y ago

Ericsson did an LTE-Advanced demo reaching around 950Mbps from a moving van almost 2 years ago ...

gcb0 13y ago

I honestly have a hard time wanting more than 3G at any time. if anything, i'd like better latency and coverage.

msh 13y ago
my LTE connection got much better latency than 3g on the same carrier (maybe around 15-25 ms less)

pieter 13y ago

All these faster speeds won't do anything really for heavily populated areas. The most important thing is total available bandwidth (bytes/sec/hz), and it's unclear how better that will get. LTE itself doesn't improve a lot over 3G techniques, the thing that's making LTE faster in saturated conditions right now is that there's just more bandwidth compared to 3G.